My phone rings at quarter to midnight. I don’t have the sort of life in which anyone ever calls me so late, especially on a school night. I am jolted out of sleep, expecting a nightmare of something-gone-wrong. But when I see who is calling, I smile my way to...
When I became aware of anything besides my laptop screen, the first thing I noticed was that my hands were shaking. I suppose my fingers had been steady enough for keystrokes, letters into words into sentences. But my trembling hands symbolized how unsure I felt that...
It is an early August evening in northern Michigan. When I first arrived at Interlochen seven weeks ago, the daylight stretched until after 10 p.m, and we watched late-night campfires sparkling into summer nights before midnight caught up with us. Now the evenings...
There is a spot in northern Michigan where a creek that has been meandering through the forest rushes into a great lake. I won’t tell you where it is, because I would be giving away a secret gifted to me by locals - friends who, on my first visit to the place, ran...
It's a winter Saturday morning, and we just helped Chris Staley move a few stools and tables to set up the art center's studios. My student Joe - who has perhaps taught me more than I've taught him - and I are about to spend the day learning from discussion and...
During my second year of teaching at a small-town high school in New Jersey, I met Shannon. She came to my classroom by way of a few other art courses, and at first we were a little cautious of each other. She was clearly talented in ceramics and meticulous about...
It’s a beautiful July night in northern Michigan. I’m settled into an outdoor amphitheater seat next to a comfortable friend, listening to the tuning chatter of a high school orchestra. Windows on the back wall amplify sparkles from the backstage lake. The students...
In the spring of 1993, I received a letter that changed my life. I’d been accepted into the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts - a 5-week summer program for the visual and performing arts. Over 2,000 high school sophomores and juniors applied, and 200 were...
It is May. The seniors are finished with regular classes, but still wander in and out of the studio. The art show is finished and slowly disassembling itself. I’m somewhere between a sigh of relief and the anxiety of what’s next. For the last week or so, a student...
Sometimes a song pulls me through a week, and this week, it's Radiate, from Jack Johnson's album From Here to Now to You. I know that we can attribute just about anything into music, but I'm reading this song as a making song. One verse: I see you lost in what you...
The student stared blankly at our guest presenter, struggling to answer her question about a story that appeared in a recent issue of our school newspaper. "Should have read the article, Mike," jabbed Dan, a rising senior. "He tried, but the lede was buried," said...
It is the last day of the the three-week summer arts residency for high school students, where I spent most of my energy and passion this summer. We are wrapping up the last class in a now-spotless studio, a space that had been covered...